NPD: Physical sales still king of gaming

Market analysts the NPD Group have shown that most gamers pick up their must-have titles from retailers rather than downloading them, despite the massive growth in digital distribution.

In its Core Gaming 2013 report, the group found that the economic climate hasn't hindered spending, with 80 per cent of core gamers saying they still purchase brand new physical copies of games.

Additionally, 70 per cent of those questioned also picked up titles via digital distribution platforms such as Steam or Origin, suggesting that consumers still prefer to hold a physical copy of the game in their hands.

"Digital purchasing among core gamers has plenty of room to grow," said analyst Liam Callahan.

"While many core gamers indicate they are purchasing full games and digital add-on content frequently, there are those that stated they have never purchased digital content."

Over the closing three months of 2012, NPD found that gamers spend nearly double their money on buying new physical copies when compared to digital downloads and used games.

The study also found that only 14 per cent of those identified as gamers counted as "core gamers", meaning they had to spend over give hours per week gaming on a console or PC and play certain genres.

Despite making up only a fraction of overall players, core gamers still consisted of 37.5 million people.

image: © Scott Akerman

James Lee

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James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.